"—makes us strong," Marcus concluded.
And his father's heart had felt heavy enough at times to have wished for death. But his country needed him at its helm, now more than ever, and the luxury of giving up, of surrendering to the burdens of life, was not his to partake.
The two men shook hands in silence, sealing a political alliance as well as a personal one.
Salim would be in Montebello in less than two days. They could go forward from there.
* * *
Max followed Cara into the small, one-story house and looked around the surrounding area. Vaulted, wooden beamed ceilings met his eye. The living room appeared to be both large and cozy at the same time. Two things at once. Much the way its owner was, Max mused.
"So this is where you live?"
She swung around, immediately on the defensive. "What's wrong with it?"
"Nothing." He had no idea where that wary tone she'd used had come from. He certainly hadn't done anything to bring it on. "You know, you really should do something about that tendency you have to see battlefields where there are only meadows."
She tried to remember if there was something in her refrigerator that she could safely offer a guest. She'd been away for several weeks and all she knew she had were two boxes of cereal in the pantry. Any milk had long since turned sour.
"Meadows can be turned into battlefields in the blink of an eye." Moving around several jars of spaghetti sauce, she located a box of spaghetti. Dinner, she thought in triumph. She glanced at him over her shoulder. "Ever hear of Bull Run?"
He thought for a moment. "No."
"Sorry, I forgot." Closing the pantry door with her elbow, she brought the jar of sauce and box of spaghetti to the counter. "You're not American."
"I am in part." He watched her take a pot out of the closet and search for another. Something stirred inside of him. Since when had rummaging for cookware become sexy? "My mother was born in this country. In California."
If she'd had a palace to live in, she damn well wouldn't have left it. Cara filled one pot with water and placed it on her stove.
"So that's what you're doing in California? Looking for your roots?"
More like escaping them, he thought. "Something like that."
She turned the heat up under the pot and then placed the second one on the burner. "Did your mother come with you?"
"No," he said quietly. "She died when I was fourteen."
That was too soon to lose a mother, but at least he'd had a mother for a while. She had no idea what hers had even looked like.
Picking up a can opener, Cara turned it upside down and placed the tip under the lid, maneuvering it so that she could get air under the seal. A small popping noise announced her success. She remembered he'd said his father was dead, too. "That makes you an orphan, too. I guess that gives us something else in common."
She twisted the lid off and dumped the contents of the jar into the second pot. Max took both the jar and lid and tossed them away for her in the trash can.
"Orphans and runaways. Not the most positive things to build on."
She looked at him sharply. "Who says we're building anything?"
He moved a little closer to her. "Would you be that averse to a friendship?"
She suddenly made herself very busy. Nerves began to move just under the surface.
"You in California, me here." She took out two dinner plates from the cupboard. "Don't see that there'd be much point in starting anything, friendship or otherwise."
She was nervous, he suddenly realized. The idea made him smile. "Our paths might cross. Our lines of work keep us moving around."
He was standing much too close to her, standing in her space, taking up her air. Reminding her of things that were best left forgotten. "And you had just better keep moving, mister, because—"
He took the ladle out of her hand and placed it on the counter. "Because why, Cara?"
Was it just her, or was the air slightly thicker? Harder to breathe? "There you go, using my name again. I like it better when you call me Rivers."
He looked at her, his curiosity definitely aroused. "Why?"
Why was her mouth suddenly so dry and her fingertips tingling? He was just a man, nothing more. Why did the room seem to be tilting just because he was in it? "Because when you call me that, there's a professional space between us."
"And you want space." Rather than move back, he seemed to move forward without moving an inch.
"Yes." She damned her voice for quavering over the single word.
Max looked into her eyes, an indulgent smile on his lips. "Now who's lying?"
She felt a flash of anger and quickly rallied around it, vainly attempting to make it her standard. "Look, just because I slept with you once doesn't mean I'm about to hop into the sack with you every time we're in a room alone together."
"No hopping," he promised.
His eyes already seemed to be making love to her. Were making love to her. And definitely undermining her resolve. She tried to make him understand. "I slept with a private investigator, not a duke."
Max shook his head, his eyes keeping her prisoner. "You slept with a man, not a vocation."
Didn't he understand? She'd been on equal footing before, but here she was out of her league. "Being a duke isn't a vocation, it's away of life. You're used to grand things—"
"Yes," he said softly, feathering his fingers through her hair, his eyes caressing her. "I am."
She felt herself weakening and sinking fast. "Damn it, you don't play fair, Ryk—what the hell do I call you, anyway?"
Max reached behind her and turned off the burner beneath the pot of water. ' "Max' always worked."
She was determined to be defiant until what she now realized was the inevitable end. "I like Ryker better."
His smile got under her skin with long, arousing fingers. "Then use Ryker if it makes you comfortable. I want you to be comfortable, Cara."
She knew better. He was a man. There was only one thing a man wanted a woman to be. "You want me to be naked."
He laughed, but only softly. Seductively. She was beginning to think she hadn't a chance. "Eventually. Getting there is half the fun."
"Fun?" she breathed, feeling everything beginning to turn upside down.
"Fun. Pleasure," Max supplied, gently beginning to tease the first button on her blouse out of its hole. "Use any word you want." He separated another button from its hole. "But use it later. Because I need to kiss you now."
She had to swallow before she spoke. The words were sticking in her throat. "Need?"
"Yes," Max whispered, his lips almost touching hers. "Need."
It was the word that defined what she was feeling as well. Need. A huge, overpowering need that quickly ate through her like a hungry shrew, chewing away at all the walls of resistance she was so vainly trying to reconstruct.
The last time they had been made of steel, and still they had crumbled. This time, they were hardly as strong as papier-mache.
Because she had made love with him.
Because she knew how tender he could be.
She was drowning in her own needs. Cara told herself that what he was saying, what he was doing to her, was all a ruse. Men like Ryker knew how to play women, knew how to make them want what wasn't any good for them. It didn't matter, she couldn't convince herself. Couldn't pull away from him.
She wanted it as much as he did. Maybe even more, though she hated to admit it, even to herself.
But this was good for her, she argued silently. However fleeting, however invisible its foundations were, this wild, heady feeling, this rush of adrenaline and desire, was good for her.
It amazed Max that the fire he felt inside his loins and belly was even greater this time around than it had been the last. It was his experience that mysteries that had been breached were not as tempting the second time around. Somehow, that didn't seem to be the case this time around.
She was still a mystery to him, still an u
nsolved puzzle. They were dancing to a tune that was unfamiliar to him. Unlike other women in his life, Cara wasn't eager to please him, wasn't eager to be with him every waking moment, and yet despite this, or perhaps because of this, he found her fascinating. And heady.
Like alcohol consumed on a stomach too empty to offer any resistance.
Just as her head went spinning out of control and her knees threatened to buckle humiliatingly, Max surprised her by scooping her up in his arms.
Drawing her lips back from his, she looked at him, a question in her eyes.
He gave voice to his. "Where's your bedroom?"
The feel of his breath on her skin excited her. "There." She pointed off into the distance, her sense of direction all but stripped away from her, along with what she'd once thought was her common sense. "Why?"
"Because—" he pressed a kiss to her throat"—if I don't get you there in the next five seconds, I'm going to make love to you right here on the floor."
Make love.
Not have sex, make love.
Cara wrapped herself up in the word, pretending it was real. That he meant exactly that. She had never heard the word applied to her. No one had ever told her they loved her.
Just for now, with her heart swelling in anticipation, she pretended that someone had.
Trying not squirm as a myriad of delicious feelings battled for control of her body, Cara pressed a kiss to his neck.
"I like the floor," she whispered, feeling decadent and wildly innocent at the same time. He made her feel an entire spectrum of diverse, opposing emotions and it was wonderful.
The next moment, as a rush of adrenaline pulsated and surged through his veins, Max set her back on the floor. Her arms wound around his neck, rejecting a separation.
She wanted him. Here and now. Wanted this man right here on her rug.
She was a tigress, there was no other way to describe her. On some distant plane, Max had thought he knew what to anticipate, at least as far as the physical mechanics of lovemaking went.
He was wrong.
This time, if anything, she was the one who took charge. She was the one to make love to him. Though he had made the first move by beginning to unbutton her blouse, it was she who began to undress him.
Her fingers flew nimbly, teasingly over the buttons on his shirt, undoing them one by one, pressing a kiss to his chest each time a little more skin appeared. She drew the shirttails out of his waistband and then pulled the material from his shoulders, all but ripping it off his arms.
Flinging the shirt behind her, Cara unnotched his belt, then flicked apart the snap to his jeans. Jeans on a duke. The world was a funny place.
Her mouth curved.
Her eyes were wicked as she looked into his. Hypnotizing him. And then her fingers began to delve beneath the barriers of the material, slowly slipping down to touch his flesh. Making him quicken with anticipation, making him groan as just the barest hint of the tips of her fingers skimmed along the length of him.
She was making him crazy.
Gripping her shoulders, Max pulled her to him, sealing his mouth to hers. Feasting on her lips.
Making love to her face, her limbs, her very being.
A voice within his brain cautioned him to go slow, but it was merely a vague, almost muted hum somewhere in the background.
He didn't listen. He didn't want to.
His hands flew over her body, divesting her of her clothes quickly, hardly able to hold back the raging hunger he felt eating away at him. Quickly, as he caressed her, he rediscovered what he already knew was there.
Finding her for the first time.
Again.
If possible, her body was even more magnificent this time around than it had been the last. He touched, caressed, tantalized, worshiped. And with each pass, he discovered that he couldn't get enough of her.
Every kiss gave birth to another, more urgent than the last.
He hardly recognized himself, but there was no time for thought, for analysis. There was only time to react, to savor.
To make love.
Bringing her as gently as he could to the floor, his body poised over hers, he momentarily pulled back, looking at her. Memorizing the features that his fingers had already committed to memory.
"You're magnificent," he whispered.
His mouth over hers, he gave her no time to respond. No time to think. He took her because she was already his. And he was already hers.
Chapter 14
Afterglow, Cara discovered, had staying power. It was still with her the next morning as she boarded King Marcus's private jet, a luxurious Gulfstream. Her body throbbed like a timpani drum solo every time she thought of the night she'd shared with Max.
They'd made love three times. On the living-room floor, on her bedroom floor and then in her bed. Exhausted, contented, she'd finally fallen asleep in his arms, which to her was even more intimate than the lovemaking. It meant that on some level, some part of her trusted him.
She didn't want to. Because trusting someone meant giving up her defenses. It meant surrendering and being left completely exposed.
She didn't seem to have a choice.
Last night, the dream, the nightmare, hadn't come. It was as if, subconsciously, she'd felt that there was someone to protect her now.
But that in itself, was a dream. A fantasy. This affair had no future. How could it? Max was someone whose lineage could be traced back for dozens of generations, planted in the garden of a country she'd never even really been aware of until just a few days ago.
Her lineage stopped with her. The only person who she felt was part of her family wasn't even related to her by blood. Instead it was a woman who had taken her under her wing and into her heart.
What sort of future did that give them? The answer was simple. None.
And yet...
And yet, she wanted desperately to go on pretending that, based on yesterday, there was a tomorrow for the two of them.
Cara looked out the window at the endless clear sky that stretched out before her, searching for a sense of tranquillity, however fleeting.
She supposed, in the literal sense of the word, there was a tomorrow for them. Tomorrow and the day after and the day after that until she finally returned with Weber to American soil. And then she and Max would part company.
They might even part company now, she thought. After all, once his king was done with Weber, there was no need for Max to hurry back to the States. Maybe he would decide to stay in his native country for a while. Absence did make the heart grow fonder. Maybe now that he had something to compare it to, Montebello would seem better to him.
But she had a life waiting for her in Shady Rock, such as it was. And she would have to leave.
"You're awfully quiet," Max commented. Weber was in the small cargo compartment, guarded by two of the soldiers that his uncle had sent over along with the Gulfstream. Max could afford to sit back and relax. And study the woman sitting in the seat beside him. She'd been pensive for a long while now. "What are you thinking about?"
That this is going to be over soon. "That I hate plane rides."
Flying had been part of his life for as far back as Max could remember. One of his first memories was sitting beside his mother as they went on a royal visit to see Queen Elizabeth II of England. Getting around by plane was almost second nature to him. He'd never given it much thought.
"There's nothing to worry about," he assured her. "It's safer than driving a car."
She'd heard that before and wasn't sold. "Never heard of a car falling out of the sky."
The wisecrack, he noted, was without its customary bite. Something was bothering her. Something she didn't want to discuss.
"You're safe, trust me."
Trust me. There it was again, the call to surrender, to give up who she was—a woman who had built in so many safeguards in her life against getting hurt, she was completely swept up in the mechanics and had entirely forgotten how to feel.
Until the other night.
Whether he meant to or not, Max had unlocked something within her, had shown her what it was like to feel again and suddenly, nothing was the same anymore.
This had to stop, she upbraided herself.
She'd never been some moonstruck, feeble-minded female before. She knew better. She was tough and strong and didn't need anyone, least of all a man, to make her life meaningful. She did that all by herself.
By herself.
Alone.
The word taunted her. She was always alone, even in a crowd. Even when she was the center of it, the way she had been that last time when she had brought in that rapist who had jumped bail in Denver.
Max had made her feel as if she wasn' t alone, as if she...
Stop it, she ordered. You'll make yourself crazy.
Maybe it was already too late for that.
"We'll be there soon," he was saying to her, his voice breaking through the clouds that were swirling around her brain.
She looked out the window. They were passing through endless sky and had been for hours. There wasn't even a single cloud formation to break up the monotony. She felt completely disoriented. "How can you tell?"
He tapped his wristwatch. "Because we've been in the air for a little over eight hours and I know how long it takes to reach the capital of Montebello."
She nodded carelessly, suddenly wishing that this was behind her and she could go on with her life.
Hoping that somehow, time could stand still long enough for her to harvest these moments.
And wasn't that crazy?
Maybe what she really needed, she decided, was to get away. To go somewhere on a vacation. A nice long vacation to recharge, reenergize and hopefully get her head together.
"Why don't you just sit back and enjoy the plane ride?" he suggested. Max called over the flight attendant and asked for a little light white wine for both of them.
"Trying to get me drunk?"
"As I recall," he thought back to the bar where she had drugged him, "it would probably take a dozen glasses to do that. I just want you to unwind a little before your spring pops out of its casing."
The Disenchanted Duke Page 15
